


We Really, Actually Made It!

by OceanMelon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged up characters, Gen, Hinata being a bubbly little bundle of joy and tiring out everyone with less energy, Olympics AU, Sorry for ooc, natsu also plays volleyball, there is literally one swear word here other than the obligatory 'dumbass' so I'm leaving it G
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 18:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5015965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMelon/pseuds/OceanMelon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years after Tokyo 2020, Hinata and Kageyama turn up at what will probably be Natsu's last match and discover that the only trouble with being Olympic Champions is everyone knowing their faces. Also known as Hinata going to watch his sister play and ending up reminiscing about the game that broke records.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Really, Actually Made It!

**Author's Note:**

> So I may or may not have gotten obsessed with [Reiconcorps'](http://reiconcorps.tumblr.com/) amazing KageHina Olympics AU and just kind of smashed this out in an hour or so without looking up anything to do with volleyball in the Olympics or how the Japanese team does internationally. Meh-shmeh, I’m sure it’ll be fine.  
> This isn’t a KageHina fic, by the way. Everyone here is involved entirely platonically, not matter what my brain might be screaming right now.

If there was one thing that Hinata couldn’t get used to after _that_ game, it was people knowing who he was. It was entirely understandable, it would be strange if his face had remained where it was in the shadows of obscurity after what they’d done, but he’d always assumed he’d fade away with the rest of the excitement.

It had already been three years but, when he closed his eyes, he still flew back there.

The sweat dripping off his nose as it ran out from his hair and down his face. Him standing at the back of the court with his hands on his knees and his breath still coming fast. The way the court felt like it was on fire, it was so hot. The other team, glaring down from almost half a metre above him. And the crowd. The way they roared with cheers that had ceased to be words – just white noise that rose and fell like the sea, blocking out any sort of thought. There was no fear or nervousness in his mind anymore, just the sound of human voices, raised in both excitement and apprehension. Yet, when the captain gathered them into a huddle, his voice low and quiet in comparison to the crowd, Hinata could hear him as clear as a bell.

There is nothing in the world that compares to that one moment when the captain looks him in the eye and says, “We’ve done all we can. We’ll probably get wiped from here but... Shouyo, it’s all on you now.”

Yeah, that match had been one to remember so there was little wonder that people stared as he wandered into the Sendai City Gymnasium. He could hear the people around him muttering.

_Isn’t that Hinata Shouyo?_

_No way._

_What? The shortest man ever to make the national team?_

_What could he be doing here?_

_It’s not him, man. He doesn’t just turn up to random junior high school tournaments._

Hinata wasn’t exactly sure what sort of emotion these hushed words were spoken with. Was it admiration? Respect? Or were they disappointed in him, after all? Perhaps they just simply couldn’t believe it. People often told him he looked shorter in person and just because he was known as ‘the shortest man ever to make the national team’ didn’t mean people weren’t surprised at just how short that actually was.

 _Still_ , he reminded himself, _I’m a professional. I have to take these things in stride._

So he turned and gave a smile like the sun and a little wave at the nearest group of gossiping teenage boys.

“Holy shit, it’s really him!” he could hear one of them cry after he’d passed.

He really was never going to get used to people knowing who he was.

 

Natsu was on centre court when he finally reached the stands. Despite the understandably high number of tall people there were in the gym – considering what sport they had come to watch and the fact that most of them were probably ex-players themselves – Hinata instantly recognised the one leaning up against the railing, one foot crossed behind the other and with his cap pulled down low over his eyes.

He smacked his teammate sharply on the shoulder and leant onto the rail beside him. Kageyama turned on him with a glare.

“I don’t like this,” was the first thing he said, turning back to the warm-up below him.

“What’s wrong with it? Besides, it’s not every day my little sister makes it to the finals,” replied Hinata.

“She’s only in junior high. There’ll be other times.”

Hinata hummed in thought. “That’s only if she keeps playing volleyball. She told me the other day she wasn’t enjoying it anymore. She said it was all pwuah now.” He made a sound like a deflating balloon.

“Pwuah, really? She said it was pwuah?"

“Yeah, she didn’t like having to spend every afternoon training or, when she dressed up, having to cover the bruises on her forearms and legs. She said she was just sick of volleyball being the most important thing in her life and she wanted to do something else.”

Kageyama looked horrified. “What else _is_ there?”

“Who knows, but I bet she’ll find it.”

The was silence for a minute or so between the pair, filled with nothing but the sounds of conversations around them, the cheering of the bigger teams, and the continuous ‘thud-pop-slam!’ of volleyballs hitting arms and hands  and the floor beneath them.

“I don’t like this,” said Kageyama again.

“What’s wrong, Kageyama-kun? Remembering bad days?”

He received a hefty shove with a muttered ‘dumbass’ for his troubles.

“No, this is a volleyball tournament,” replied the taller man at last.

Hinata looked around the gym as if expecting to have suddenly walked into the wrong event. “I know that.”

“So, we’re just here to support your sister. What happens if someone recognises us? Last thing I want to do is get sucked into signing autographs for two straight hours again. If that happens, we’ll be stuck while Natsu either loses or wins and we won’t know anything, whichever way it goes.”

They both looked down at the smallest Hinata stretching out her knees and hips in preparation for the match. Shouyo checked her form with his eyes, making sure everything was square and pulling in the direction it was supposed to be going. The last thing he wanted was for her to hurt herself doing something that was meant to _prevent_ injuries.

“Nice point,” he said. “But there’s not much we can do about it. I wasn’t going to miss this. Not when it could be her last match.”

The little red-head on the court looked up just then and caught sight of the two very familiar men leaning against the railing.

“Niichan! Tobio-Nii!” she cried and Shouyo’s attention zeroed in on her. “What are you doing here? I told you not to come! You’re embarrassing!”

Shouyo leant right over the railing, so far that Kageyama had to tether him to safety by a hand on his shoulder.

“Natsuuuuu!” he sang, waving manically. “Good luck! Niichan is rooting for you!”

The whispers were starting up again.

_Are they who I think they are?_

_Oh, goodness, they’re both here._

_It really is them._

_Do you think I could ask for an autograph?_

_Does that mean that tiny kid is his sister? Well, I suppose he’s pretty small, too._

Kageyama tugged his cap a little further down his face before grabbing his teammate by the arm and dragging him through the stands and back into the relative safety of the hallway.

“Kageyama! Where are we going? What about Natsu?” spluttered Hinata as they went.

“You can go back out when everyone calms down. Stay here until then.”

Hinata frowned but did as he was told. After all, following Kageyama was what had gotten him to _that_ game.

He thought about it again, sitting in the hallway, waiting for the starting whistle of Natsu’s game when everyone would be more preoccupied with the score-line than who the spectators were.

 

It had really been the interview afterwards that had cemented his name as synonymous with the Japanese Olympic team’s. After all, it was difficult to tell people apart from a camera image sometimes thirty metres overhead, especially if they were all dressed the same and weaving in and out between each other like that magic trick where the audience has to keep track of the coin under the cup. The interview had never appeared on Japanese television but, within three days of the match, it had spread to every corner of the internet imaginable.

He could remember it so clearly. Not even an hour after the final point slammed into the floor, still high on adrenaline and euphoria, a neatly dressed woman had flagged him down as he followed his team out of the stadium.

“You’re Shouyo Hinata, aren’t you? Of the Japanese team?” she asked him in English and it took a few seconds for the words to rearrange themselves in his exhausted, hormone flooded brain.

“Yes, I am,” he’d replied, still not sure if what he was saying was understandable in the slightest.

“Would you accept an interview? I work for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.”

“ _Would I_?” he practically screamed in Japanese before coughing once and replying again in English. 

A minute later, he was hooked up to an earpiece with a translator on the other end and standing in front of a folding cardboard backdrop covered in sponsor’s logos.

“Ready?” the woman asked and the earpiece repeated it in perfect Japanese.

Hinata nodded again. The woman turned to the camera over her shoulder and touched a finger to her own earpiece.

“That’s right, Jim,” she said with a brilliant TV smile. “And I’m right here with Shouyo HInata, charismatic spiker of the Japanese team.” The camera’s angle changed slightly to catch Hinata’s sweat soaked face in all its disgusting glory and the woman turned to him. “So, wow, Shouyo, Japan has just taken out the men’s gold. How are you feeling right now?”

Three seconds of silence as the translation bubbled in his ear. He smiled at ‘charismatic spiker’ (how many years had it been already since he’d switched from middle-blocker to wing-spiker? And it still took him by surprise) before he replied. In English. He was sure he could have replied in Japanese. If they were going to provide him with a translator, chances were they weren’t expecting the audience to go without. But he’d worked way too hard to get his English to the point where he could use it in a conversation, way too many hours hunched over textbooks with Yachi-san, not to use it then. And, besides, when his team wins gold at the Olympics, he wants the world to hear about it in _his_ words.

“Oh, I feel very sweaty,” he said, accent incredibly heavy but his words still recognisable, and the interviewer laughed. “I am very sweaty and a bit tired but everything is still amazing! Of course, I’m very excited. It is amazing that we can get this far. But at the same time, I have only ever wanted to play one more game. As long as we keep winning, we can stay on the court longer. That is what I have always thought. So, at the moment, it does not feel like it is all over because we won. I am just waiting to play again!”

Who was he kidding? He could feel his knee aching behind its strapping and guard and pulling tight against both as it started to swell. He had known half-way through the match that it was getting bad, when the ache started spreading to his shin and he thought he could _feel_ the bones rubbing against one another. Something was definitely wrong, there. Right then, he didn’t even know if he would ever jump again. But if he could... If he got back home and found he could still jump... Then there would be nothing in the world that could stop him from playing that ‘one more game’.

The woman nodded emphatically and moved onto the next question. “Obviously, Japan was quite the underdog this time, what can you tell us about facing such a high ranking team? What sort of process do you go through to win against such an opponent?”

Hinata gave one of his signature smiles, the one that adoring teenage girls would take screenshots of and set as phone wallpapers and desktop screensavers. “There was no reason we could not win. We train as hard, we wanted to win as much, we had as good teamwork as the other team. As long as I remember that my team is strong, we can defeat anyone. My high school captain used to say, ‘They are only high schoolers, just like us,’ and that is what gets me through a lot of tough matches. I know I can win.”

“Your team _is_ strong, we’ve all seen it here today, but how do you see your role within it?”

The translator lagged for a moment, some technical difficulty, and Hinata didn’t trust his own translation of the question so there were ten seconds or so of silence before he could answer.

“I’m a spiker? I score points,” he eventually said, tipping his head to one side as if it were obvious.

The woman laughed. “Of course!” she said. “Just before we go, is there anyone you want to thank for this win?”

The woman took a step back at the manic sparkle in Hinata’s eyes. This was the question he’d been waiting for. This was the ‘big-shot athlete’ question. And as soon as the words had left her mouth, Hinata knew for sure that he really was standing at the top of the world.

“Well, my parents for not saying anything when I suddenly said I wanted to start volleyball,” he said, the words faster now that they were the ones he had rehearsed a thousand times in front of the mirror, “and my little sister, Natsu, for not getting upset when I had practice and I could not play with her anymore. But... I guess, most of all... My team.” He stopped for a second and glanced over to where his team were still waiting for him in the doorway out of the stadium. “Can I get someone, actually? He is on the team.”

The woman looked completely taken aback for a second before she confirmed that he could.

Hinata stepped out of frame before he shouted Kageyama over, eventually running off to grab him and drag him back to the interview with him.

“This is Kageyama Tobio,” he said as if the woman didn’t already know.

“Oi, Hinata,” warned Kageyama, still trapped in Hinata’s grasp.

“He is our setter and if it were not for him telling me I was terrible when I was fifteen, I probably would not be here right now!”

Kageyama only scowled more. His English was practically non-existent (having not attended Yachi’s English boot-camps) so the only words he’d picked up were ‘Kageyama Tobio’ and ‘setter’.

“Can I thank one more person?” asked Hinata, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.

The woman only shrugged, already tired of the bundle of energy that her interview subject had become, so he switched back to Japanese for his last acknowledgement.

Holding up the victory sign to the camera, Hinata grinned with everything he had.

“We made it, guys! Team Karasuno 2014, we really, actually made it!”

**Author's Note:**

> (In the end, Hinata had to take a year off for surgery on both his knees (repair surgery for one and preventative surgery for the other that was going the same way) but is expected to make a full recovery. He lost his place as a regular on the Nat team, obviously since he was away for so long. At the time this story is set, he’s back training with them but not nearly as much as he used to. He’s still settling things down in his crappy knees.)
> 
> This was not supposed to be this long. It was meant to be a couple hundred words max but... whatever, it’ll do.  
> I had some fun with name order here. What do you think?  
> I spent a grand total of about three seconds trying to find the manga release year before being like, 'stuff it, I know the anime one off the top of my head.'  
> Also, the interviewer is from the ABC because I wanted the interview to be in English (so Hinata could show that he was serious enough about this to learn English) and I really don’t know any other countries’ channels off the top of my head. I figured an Olympic broadcasting deal would either go to Prime or the ABC and, since I’d much rather watch without ads, I gave it to the ABC. So, here you are.
> 
> My writing blog is [here](https://iwritewiththemoonanddontgettobed.tumblr.com/). It's a bit of a mess but feel free to come say hi :)
> 
> [edit 11.aug.2016: Guys... Prime got the broadcasting deal for the Rio games.... and they're doing a shoddy job of it. I can Only hope for something better come Tokyo.]


End file.
